Crossing the Line (Kerry Wilkinson) (23 page)

when there was ketchup smeared across his chin.

Dave nodded beyond her again to where the former superintendent was walking towards them, tray

in hand, face blank. Jessica stood. ‘Niall?’

He almost dropped the tray in surprise at someone speaking to him. ‘Jessica, I, er . . .’

‘Are you all right?’

His eyes darted both ways, wanting out of the conversation. He tried to laugh it off but his other

features betrayed him. ‘Yes, just a busy morning – so many things to work through up there.’ He

stepped past her, heading for a single table.

‘If you need me, you know where my office is.’

Niall nodded, muttering, ‘Of course’, but she knew he had no intention of visiting her.

When Jessica sat down, the sauce had disappeared from Rowlands’ chin. ‘He really has got it bad,

hasn’t he?’ Dave said.

‘He’s probably just lonely – his wife died, now this. Slowly, it’s happening to everyone who has

been a part of his life.’

Before she could stop herself, Jessica was yawning. When her eyes had finished watering, Dave

was staring at her. ‘Sodding hell, that was like being hit by a cyclone. You’ve not been out looking for Tony since that night we were out, have you?’

He picked up a piece of fish, meaning he wasn’t looking straight at her as Jessica lied by telling

him she’d not even thought of Tony since the night they’d gone out together.

She’d spent each evening trawling the back streets of Manchester city centre trying to find Tony or

any possible reason why he was connected to Scott Dewhurst. She’d been propositioned by drunken

weekend revellers, ended up with frozen bits she didn’t know she had, and hardly slept. Meanwhile,

Thomas’ warning kept drifting around her head.

He ain’t scared of you boys in blue.

There was nothing new in that. When she had worked in uniform, Jessica had arrested drunken

women fighting each other who wouldn’t have stopped scratching, biting and kicking until they’d

killed the other person. They were so much worse than the men and, when restrained, they’d thrash

around, try to headbutt the arresting officer, spitting and saying they were going to kill everyone and

anyone.

The drink made them fearless.

Then there were the groups of youngsters who’d roam the streets, throwing stones at cars and

giving anyone who tried to stop them a mouthful of abuse. They knew swear words Jessica had never

come across when she was their age, jeering that they were below the age of criminal responsibility

and couldn’t be touched.

Their age, upbringing and sense of invulnerability made them fearless.

With Scott, she’d seen it herself because it was a part of him. The way he’d stood across the road

from Tony’s flat with a sense that what he wanted would inevitably happen. Then in the alley, she’d

seen his cocky swagger. It wasn’t something brought about by money, it was the absolute knowledge

that he was untouchable. Jessica had even seen it through Josh’s reaction when she had been in his car

going through the photographs. He’d faltered, wanting to make sure she was talking about the right

person.

Scott Dewhurst wasn’t fearless because of booze or naivety, it was because he didn’t have that

emotion. He didn’t care about the police and would have no concerns about her. Not only that but

people were naturally scared of him.

Perhaps she was?

She’d looked up everything she could find on Scott. His record was so sparse that they had next to

nothing on him in their system and Internet searches had thrown up little more. All she really had was

the confidential SCD files Josh had emailed her. She had read and re-read the notes until she could

practically recite them word for word. Josh had told her that Scott wasn’t top of the tree in

Manchester’s criminal underworld, so she had even started investigating the person to whom he

answered.

Christian Fraser ran an empire of low-level clubs and pubs around the city that were almost

certainly a front for dealing drugs and laundering money. He was the one the SCD
really
wanted, with Scott someone they thought could potentially turn. The pair’s combined criminal records were almost

nothing – two smart guys building a fortune on the backs of the easily manipulated. What could either

of them possibly want with Tony?

For Jessica, things had already gone too far. Dave had done enough for her in the past and how

could she ask Izzy to help when she was a mother? She was supposed to be an inspector now and yet

she’d done the same stupid thing she always did – got involved. This time it was worse because

she’d allowed Tony to get to her. Stupid, alcoholic, tea-loving junkie Toxic Tony Farnsworth was in

her head and she couldn’t get him out.

What on earth had he got himself into?

‘Jess—’

Rowlands’ voice brought her back into the room. ‘Wuh . . . what?’ she replied.

‘You’re worried about him, aren’t you?’

‘Who?’

‘Tony.’

‘Don’t be wet.’

Jessica hid behind her plastic teacup but Dave wasn’t fooled. ‘Have you ever looked into his

background?’

‘What, the sleeping rough?’

‘His parents.’

‘I know they own some houses and that they’ve got a few quid.’

Dave shook his head, stuffing the final three chips into his mouth in one go. ‘Mmmf, pfft, mmph.’

‘Attractive.’

He swallowed. ‘Come with me.’

Jessica threw the remains of her tea into the bin thinking she wouldn’t be surprised to find out days

later it had melded with Dave’s leftover baked beans to create some sort of toxic superbug. Rowlands

led her through the corridors towards the main floor where the constables worked. It was one of the

warmest areas of the building, largely because they were packed in so tightly. There was a clatter of

keyboards, slam of phones and general undercurrent of swearing. At the back was a large whiteboard

listing everyone’s outstanding cases – or at least it should have done.

‘Hasn’t anyone updated that?’ Jessica asked, nodding towards the board.

‘No one knows where the pens are – they keep going missing.’

‘You’re detectives – do some detecting and bloody find them. Either that or get creative and nick

them from somewhere else.’

‘Is that official GMP policy?’

‘Unofficially, yes. Now what have you got?’

Rowlands’ desk was a clutter of folders, paperwork and magazines. He leafed through the top one

which had a half-naked girl on the front.

‘If it’s some gran-bang porn mag starring your girlfriend then I’m not interested.’

Dave wasn’t listening, picking up the stacks of work papers and putting them down again, checking

under his keyboard, and then starting to go through the drawers. Rubber bands, biros, a can of Fosters,

paperclips, a laser pen, coins, a packet of matches, buttons . . .

‘Wow, you’ve got more crap in your desk than I’ve got in mine.’

Dave held out a small carved wooden frog. ‘Want that?’

‘Why would I?’

‘No idea – I think it was in here when I moved in . . . Aha!’ From the bottom drawer, Dave pulled

out a glossy, slightly ripped magazine covered with tea-mug rings. On the front was a photo of a

scantily clad female with her arms and legs fully outstretched in a way that couldn’t be comfortable.

‘I thought I said no granny porn?’

Dave began flicking through the pages. ‘It’s from a Sunday newspaper a year or so ago. The picture

on the front’s from some photographer’s profile. They like to pretend they’re all arty, instead of just

taking porno pics. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.’

‘Why’d you keep it?’

Rowlands thrust the magazine into her hand, pointing at an entry at the bottom of a page. ‘They do a

rich list every year. I’m not really fussed but I got reading for some reason and look who popped up.’

Number 397

Anthony and Sylvia Farnsworth, property, £188.5m

Anthony Richard Farnsworth’s father was a miner, his mother a baker and housewife. He grew

up in Bradford, West Yorkshire. By the age of nineteen, he had married his grammar school

sweetheart, Sylvia, and founded Farnsworth Properties. Initially, he renovated run-down houses

bought at auction but quickly developed a reputation for the speed at which he could work. What

could have been a risky investment in buying a large plot of land outside Halifax turned into a

windfall when the council commissioned him to spearhead their social housing push. The

custom-built estate was completed ahead of schedule and he received additional praise for the

high-quality builds. Farnsworth’s hands-on, personable approach has garnered him a solid

reputation throughout the industry, leading to a succession of housing contracts from local

councils. He currently lives close to Huddersfield in West Yorkshire with his wife, Sylvia. This

year they will celebrate their golden wedding anniversary. They have one son, Anthony Junior.

Jessica had spent so much time looking into Scott that she’d not bothered to do her research

properly on Tony. She knew his parents were rich – but this was on a different level. Suddenly she

had a little over one-hundred-and-eighty-eight-million reasons why a person like Scott Dewhurst

would be interested in Toxic Tony.

25

Jessica stared at the heavy red lights of the lorry in front beaming through her car’s windscreen like

two giant Catherine wheels. She pulled the handbrake up for the umpteenth time and turned to the man

in the passenger seat. ‘Has there ever been a bigger crime inflicted on the British public than the

M62? The bloody thing’s always chocker – usually some jackknifed lorry. If they wanted to keep

Lancastrians and Yorkshiremen apart, they could have just built a wall instead of a hundred-mile-long

traffic jam.’

Niall glanced up from his newspaper. ‘I was warned not to go in a car with you.’

‘Who by?’

‘What’s the name of your desk sergeant? The portly fellow.’

‘Pat?’

‘He said – and this is a direct quote: “I hope you’ve made a will”.’

‘Bastard.’

‘There were a few others too.’

‘It’s a myth!’

‘Your friend with the spiky hair—’

‘Dave?’

‘He had some article from the
Herald
about how the number of cyclists on Manchester’s roads had

fallen by fifteen per cent in the past four months. He pointed out that the number coincided almost

exactly with the length of time since you returned to work.’

Jessica started to speak but it wasn’t coherent phrases that were coming out, more a long stream of

previously unrelated swear words that had now been linked together to form entirely new

descriptions of her colleagues. ‘I’m not that bad,’ she eventually managed.

Niall peered around the lorry at the blue sign on the side of the road. ‘I have to say that in the fifty minutes it’s taken us to move fewer than ten miles, you’ve been perfectly fine.’

‘Thank you.’

‘There was that incident on the roundabout but—’

Jessica’s eyes flashed sideways and the former DSI stopped mid-sentence. How was she supposed

to know the other driver was going the entire way around the roundabout and not getting off at the

junction? That’s what indicators were for.

‘I’ve had to take a holiday day for this too,’ Jessica grumbled.

Niall folded his paper away as the traffic picked up again. Jessica eased into the outer lane to

overtake, only to see the lorry zoom away from her as the cars in front crawled. Finally the other

vehicles started to move and Jessica managed to get the car into fifth gear for the first time in a while.

She could feel Niall watching her.

‘I’ve been meaning to ask why you invited me,’ he said.

‘You’ve seemed a bit bored around the station over the past week or so and I thought you’d be able

to give me a hand.’

‘But this isn’t official business?’

‘No.’

‘Are you going to tell me?’

‘We’re visiting the parents of someone I know. He’s got himself into trouble and I’m wondering if

they might be able to help.’

Niall didn’t reply instantly but must have sensed there was a lot more to it than that. Sometimes

when you did this job, you learned not to ask.

Wherever Anthony and Sylvia Farnsworth lived, it was remote. When they finally got off the

motorway at the Huddersfield junction, Jessica’s sat nav seemed intent on taking her along narrow

winding roads that seemingly went nowhere. The wintry weather had taken more of a hold on the

wrong side of the Lancashire–Yorkshire border, snow clinging to the tops of the bushes, frost lining

the edge of the roads, but the sun was at least out. The bright blue sky felt like a stranger, with the

fields steaming as the temperature gradually crept above freezing. Compared to the endless cloud that

had been hanging over Manchester, this was practically the Caribbean.

Jessica’s car hopped over a humpback bridge and she rounded a corner that narrowed into a

single-track road. Three more miles and one terrified cyclist later and Jessica pulled up next to a

thick stone pillar and pressed the buzzer. The heavy metal gates swung inwards and she accelerated

along the wide, long, straight driveway. With the frosty white-green expanses of lawn on either side

and the trees in the distance, Jessica couldn’t help but be reminded of the other big house she had

spent time in.

Niall noticed it too. ‘Everything all right?’